Cortisol Seeking vs. Dopamine Seeking: Understanding Their Roles in Mental Health

The body and brain use cortisol and dopamine as vital neurochemicals that perform distinct functions. Recognising their unique characteristics helps us understand mental health problems and human behavioural patterns. This article explores what these chemicals are, how they differ, and their impact on mental health.

What Is Dopamine?

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter—a chemical messenger that transmits signals between neurons in the brain. It plays several important roles:

• Reward and pleasure: Dopamine is also released when we do something pleasurable, we start to feel rewarded, and we reinforce behaviours that result in the pleasurable experience.

• Motivation: It is what compels us to act in an effort to achieve goals, wants and needs.

• Learning: Dopamine contributes to the reinforcement of the neural pathways related to the reinforcement of pleasant experiences.

• Motor control: It assists in regulating movement and coordination.

  
  

Dopamine-seeking refers to behaviours that aim to trigger dopamine release. This includes pursuing pleasurable activities, novelty, or rewards. This system helps us learn beneficial behaviours and pursue survival-enhancing activities when functioning normally.

What Is Cortisol?

Cortisol is an adrenal steroid hormone, which is mostly emitted during stress. Its functions include:

• Stress response: Cortisol is among the key components of our fight-or-flight response to perceived danger.

• Energy control: It increases blood sugar to give immediate energy to the person when they are stressed.

• Immune system control: Temporarily restricts unnecessary processes in case of an acute stress.

• Inflammation control: Assists in the control of inflammation of the body.

Cortisol follows a natural daily rhythm (highest in the morning, lowest at night) but also spikes in response to stressors.

Are Cortisol Seeking and Dopamine Seeking the Same?

No, cortisol seeking and dopamine seeking are fundamentally different processes with different purposes:

• Purpose: Dopamine seeking is about pursuing pleasure and reward. "Cortisol seeking," while not a standard clinical term, would refer to behaviours that trigger stress responses.

• Feeling: Dopamine release is pleasant. The release of cortisol is usually uncomfortable (anxiety, tension, alertness).

• Evolutionary intent: Dopamine rewards positive behaviour to make it enjoyable. Cortisol equips us with alertness and physiological readiness.

• Conscious unconscious: We make our way to the dopamine-inducing experiences consciously, as they are good. Cortisol-inducing experiences are not usually pursued with this end goal in mind.

There is also one significant detail: some people engage in activities that cause stress, which may seem like a cortisol-seeking activity.

This is not normally in the pursuit of cortisol, but is commonly associated with:

• The dopamine aftermath of stress relief.

• Living exciting lives by having extreme experiences. Using stress to escape emotional numbness

• Finding stress more familiar/comfortable than calm (especially for those with trauma histories)

Problematic Dopamine Seeking

How These Systems Present in People with Poor Mental Health

Once the dopamine systems are imbalanced, several conditions may arise:

• Addiction: When the brain becomes reliant on drugs or actions that cause the release of dopamine, it becomes difficult to achieve the same level of reward without increasing stimulation.

• Problem with impulse control: Inability to resist instant dopamine stimulation despite its adverse effects.

• Anhedonia: In depression, reduced dopamine signalling can lead to an inability to feel pleasure from normally rewarding activities.

• Risk-taking behaviour: Engaging in increasingly dangerous activities to achieve dopamine release.

  
  

Problematic Cortisol Patterns

When the systems of stress response are dysregulated:

• Anxiety disorders: The constant presence of high cortisol levels, with the body remaining in the alert mode, despite the absence of actual threats.

• PTSD: Due to the trauma, the stress response system may be restructured, resulting in hyperarousal (excessive cortisol response) and numbing.

• Chronic stress: Chronic cortisol exposure may cause brain damage, particularly of the hippocampus, which is involved in memory and emotional control.

• Depression: Chronic elevated cortisol has been linked with some forms of depression, especially those that are characterised by high anxiety.

• Physical health effects: The continued high levels of cortisol have been associated with cardiovascular disease, gastrointestinal issues and weakening of the immune system.

  
  

Counterintuitive Behaviours

Certain mental illnesses have apparently absurd behaviours of these systems:

1.   Trauma bonding: Traumatic individuals will inevitably re-enact stressful circumstances unconsciously since the resulting de-stress will give them rewards in the form of dopamine.

2.   Crisis-generating behaviour: Some induce crises to get the burst of cortisol and subsequent resolution, which is likely to offer:

• The feeling of ability to solve the crisis.

• Ease of the numbness of feelings.

• The support and attention of people.

3.   Self-sabotage: Reading negative news material can be a stressful experience with a strangely appealing quality: It is possible to sabotage success or happiness as a stressor. This can be more comfortable than a calming environment, particularly to an individual who was brought up in a turbulent setting.

4.   Doom scrolling: Consuming negative news content can be a trigger for  stress responses that some find oddly compelling, sometimes because:

•  The alert state can be either productive or protective.

• It has some minor dopamine reinforcement through information-seeking.

• It confirms adverse world views.

The Intersection of the Treatment Approaches.

Mental health interventions are often effective when we consider both systems:

• Mindfulness exercises: Lower cortisol levels by engaging the parasympathetic nervous system and delivering non-damaging dopamine rewards by focusing on the present moment.

• Exercise: It contributes to the natural release of dopamine and contributes to the normalisation of cortisol rhythms.

• Cognitive Behavioural Therapy: Assists in the identification and adjustment of thought patterns that contribute to not just detrimental responses to stress, but also to dysfunctional reward-seeking.

• Trauma-informed care: Awareness of the influence of early life experiences on stress response systems and reward learning.

  
  

Knowledge about these separate aspects, combined with the connections between cortisol and dopamine, helps explain behavioural patterns that emerge during mental health struggles. Mental health professionals, together with patients, can develop more effective methods for balancing the neurochemical system by better understanding these fundamental mechanisms.